Lessons they couldn't teach us
by GT Spuddie
Summary: There are some lessons that school can't teach us
1. Prologue

There are some lessons that school can't teach you.

Disclaimer: Yep, still own nothing. Not Sky High, not Harry Potter…nothing. And now I'm depressed.

A/N: The following contains some dark times for people that we all care about. If you enjoy living in Happy Fluffy Kitten Land, then I would not recommend reading the following fic. You have been warned.

**Lessons they couldn't teach us**

Prologue

Sky High was great while we were there. We were powerful and we were going to be heroes. Will and Warren were the reigning champions of Save the Citizen, Layla was the Student Body President, Magenta and Zach were voted Best Couple and I..I pretty much won every academic achievement award that was available.

It wasn't until we left that we realized how much we didn't know.

We thought that when we left school for the real world, it would be easy to be Heroes, working together. After all, we had already defeated the Bad Guys once, right?

We never questioned why there were so few adult heroes around.

We should have.


	2. Lesson 1

Lesson 1: Why we call them "Citizens"

Zach was the first of us to lose a Citizen. He had been working with the Maxville Emergency Departments as a Pathfinder, lighting the way for the crews and helping locate Citizens.

There was a fire in an office building downtown. Zach had done his job; lighting the way through the smoke and helping the office workers evacuate safely. The fire was mostly under control when the firefighters located the body. The receptionist, Amy, had passed out from smoke inhalation and had been lying on the ground behind the reception desk. The worst part was the realization that Zach had gone past her several times without noticing.

As hard as her family took the loss, Zach took it harder. For the first couple of weeks, it was almost like a suicide watch. We made sure to never leave him alone. All his life he had been the jokester, the upbeat one, and all of a sudden he was so depressed that it was like he was a different person. It took Coach Boomer, of all people, to get through to him, to remind him that we call them "Citizens" for a reason.

That it is easier to lose a Citizen, then it is to lose a person.

Zach tried to go back to his old job, but the first time out he froze. He told me afterwards that he couldn't face the thought of losing another Amy. He now works as a DJ in a club in Manhattan. His energy and enthusiasm gets the crowds going and they really enjoy his mixes.

He always dedicates the last song of the night to Amy.


	3. Lesson 2

Lesson 2: Good doesn't always stay good.

Magenta was next. After Sky High both her and I went into Surveillance work. Since our powers were unobtrusive we could hide in corners, ducts, pipes, pretty much anywhere and collect information. Secret Lair layouts, goon population numbers, all of the information that the Heroes need before they come crashing in to save the day. Now me, I've always really enjoyed my work, but Magenta wanted to be the Hero. It didn't help that she was paired up to work with Will who was the Golden Boy of the Super Powered world. It wasn't that he took all the credit, in fact he tried to highlight the part that Magenta played. The fact was that the rest of the world just didn't care.

About a year after Magenta and Will started working together, rumors started popping up about a new villain called the Red Queen. She was supposed to be building up a power base and she had a fortress set up in the mountains above Maxville. Magenta scoped it out and passed the intel on to Will.

It was a trap.

There was no Red Queen. Magenta was behind the whole set-up. The plan was for Will to be trapped and for Magenta to come through, save the day and be the Hero. Unfortunately, Magenta miscalculated. There was a landslide and in the resulting chaos, Will's back was broken. Apparently being super-strong can't save you from getting hurt.

After Magenta found out that Will's injuries were permanent, she turned herself in. She is currently residing in a maximum-security Super prison.

Zach still writes to her, but he says that she returns the letters unopened.


	4. Lesson 3

Lesson 3: Even the strongest can break.

After Will's accident, he and Layla moved in together so that they could work to rehabilitate him. Layla's cover job was as an Eco-lawyer, and Will was volunteering down at the local Youth Center as a Disabilities Coach. Their lives weren't perfect anymore, but they were happy together (even though Will did ask us to sneak in the occasional cheeseburger).

It all changed when one of the companies that Layla was prosecuting for Illegal Deforestation discovered her Super persona. They recruited a Technopath to create a completely contained cell – no windows, no light, only recycled air.

Layla was in there for four days before we located and freed her. For a normal person, four days would have been bad enough, but for Layla, cut off from the plants that she had talked to every day for all of her life, it was Hell. When we opened the cell, it was to discover that her mind had snapped and her Powers were gone.

We tired various therapies and treatments, but nothing worked. She sits at home most days, playing in the garden. Will makes sure that she doesn't get hurt.


	5. Lesson 4

Lesson 4: Not everyone works by the same codes.

I guess Warren and I are the ones that currently lead fairly happy lives, though Warren's came at a great price.

Chasm, one of his fathers' friends, had decided that Warren becoming a Hero was a great personal insult, and declared himself Warren's Nemesis. They had a few minor battles, no major damage, but then Chasm decided to up the ante. He kidnapped a bus full of school kids and then held them hostage, giving Warren 12 hours to find and rescue them.

Now…as Heroes, we have a Code of Honor, and quite often the Villains adopt the Code as well. Try not to involve the young or the elderly…Keep destruction of property to public, rather than private buildings…No-one works on Christmas Day… that sort of thing. One of the strongest Codes is that if you give a deadline, you stick to it.

Chasm broke that Code.

When Warren located him and showed up for the confrontation after just 7 hours, it was to find the children already dead and Chasm gloating over the broken bodies. Not one person I know – Hero, Villain or Citizen – has ever though Warren wrong for what he did in retribution.

After that Warren quit the Hero business. He got a job as a guidance counselor at Sky High, and started dating a Super called Kaelynn. I don't know exactly what her powers are, but they seem to have lots of coded conversations involving initials and someone called Draco.


	6. Lesson 5

Lesson 5: Life changes, whether you want it to or not.

After the others left the Hero life, I tried to carry on by myself but it wasn't the same. There was no Magenta to crack jokes with while we were setting up surveillance. Will and Zach weren't arguing over whose turn it was to play on the Xbox while the rest of us were planning in the Secret Sanctum. Layla wasn't lecturing Warren on the excessive use of force in his missions.

Friendships change. I knew this before, but I really thought that it wouldn't happen to us. Together we had been through so much in high school and as a result, I had believed that the closeness we had would carry over to our adult lives. I never thought that we could be divided up so quickly.

I still try to talk to everyone regularly, even though Magenta doesn't respond, and Layla doesn't understand. Warren, Will and I occasionally go to New York to meet up with Zach for a Guys weekend away, but it never really feels …right. We talk about sports, electronics, the odds of Coach Boomer ever getting a girlfriend, but we never talk about being Heroes. It's almost like it's forbidden. That without Magenta and Layla there, we aren't allowed to be Heroes any more. Like we aren't complete.

Sky High taught us so much, but there was some things they couldn't teach us.

They taught us how to save the Citizen, not how to cope with losing one.

How to stop a Villain, not how to stop from becoming one.

How to save others, but not how to save yourself.

They couldn't teach us how to keep on being a Hero when your world is broken and your beliefs shattered.

We really needed those lessons.


End file.
